Michelangelo

by Miles J. Unger

  In the spring of 1527 the tragedy played out in slow motion as an imperial army numbering over 30,000 men under the Duke of Bourbon snaked southward, lunging in the direction of Florence before heading for the papal capital. The forces of the League followed behind, nipping at their heels but doing little to impede their progress. On May 5, the imperial army arrived before the gates of Rome. After the Duke of Bourbon was killed by a sniper’s bullet (the artist Benvenuto Cellini rather improbably claimed credit for the fatal shot himself), Spanish and German divisions assaulted the walls of the city, breaching them the next day. The sack that followed was one of the worst atrocities ever visited upon a European city. “Many were suspended hours by the arms,” wrote one eyewitness to the mayhem unleashed upon the populace by vengeful soldiers:

  many were cruelly bound by the genitals; many were suspended by their feet high above the road or over the river, while their tormentors threatened to cut the cord. Some were half buried in cellars, others were nailed up in casks or villainously beaten and wounded; not a few were branded all over their persons with red-hot irons. Some were tortured by extreme thirst; others by insupportable noise and many were cruelly tortured by having their teeth brutally drawn. Others again were forced to eat their own ears, or nose, or their roasted testicles, and yet more were subjected to strange, unheard of martyrdoms that move me too much even to think of, much less describe.

  The fact that the murder, rape, and pillage were carried out by fellow Christians rather than by infidel Turks shocked the conscience of all Europe. Even cynical old Machiavelli, following in the camp of the army of the League of Cognac, was shocked by what he called the “dreadful news from Rome,” while the usually phlegmatic Guicciardini described 1527 as the year “full of atrocities and events unheard of for many centuries: overthrow of government, wickedness of princes, most frightful sacks of cities, great famines, a most terrible plague . . . everything full of death, flight and rapine.”

  Nowhere were the shock waves felt more strongly than in Florence, since Clement was not only the leader of the Holy Church but the de facto lord of the city. Day-to-day management had been left to his deputy, Cardinal Passerini—who in turn served as regent for two Medici nonentities, Ippolito and Alessandro de ’ MediciXXVI—but with the pope now a virtual prisoner in his fortress, the Castel Sant’Angelo, the regime had lost the main pillar of its support. Once more the ancient cry of “Popolo e libertà!” was heard in the streets of Florence as the emboldened citizens stormed the government palace, driving Passerini and his two wards into exile.

  For many Florentines, the proclamation of the new republic promised a return to the glory days when sensible burghers led the city and everyone marveled that a small town on the Arno could produce so many men of genius. But while his compatriots celebrated, Michelangelo found himself in an awkward position. His own convictions were republican, but he was willing to serve any master as long as he was allowed to pursue his art in peace.

  Fortunately for Michelangelo, the new leaders did not hold his apostasy against him, but the collapse of Medici power still meant that the various projects at San Lorenzo—for which he had sacrificed so much and to which he had devoted a decade of his life—had not only lost their principal sponsor but their rationale. Hostility to Michelangelo’s former patrons and to the symbols of Medici power only increased when Clement and Charles V signed the Treaty of Barcelona, uniting emperor and pope in the common goal of suppressing the upstart Florentine Republic. (In return, the pope agreed to deny Henry VIII a divorce from his current wife, Catherine of Aragon—who happened to be Charles’s aunt—which he wanted so he could marry Ann Boleyn.)

  Far from ostracizing Michelangelo, the new regime was eager to make use of him. In August 1527, he was offered a job as clerk to the Cinque del Contado, the department overseeing affairs in the countryside. Though he refused this rather menial post, the government soon provided him with a task more in keeping with his talents, commissioning a monumental Hercules to stand alongside the David at the entrance to the government palace as a symbol of fortitude in the face of adversity.XXVII

  In fact, the commission had been decades in the making. Shortly after the completion of the David, Piero Soderini had proposed a companion piece and had even purchased on behalf of the Signoria a large marble column for the project. Little was heard of the Hercules during the years Michelangelo spent in Rome, but at some point—and much to his chagrin—Clement awarded the commission to Baccio Bandinelli, a mediocre but prolific sculptor, no doubt in the sensible belief that Michelangelo already had his hands full with his work at San Lorenzo. According to Vasari, it was Domenico Buoninsegni who “persuaded the Pope to give the marble for the statue to Baccio . . . saying that these two great men would stimulate each other by competition. . . . Baccio boasted that he would surpass Michelangelo’s David, while Buoninsegni declared that Michelangelo wanted everything for himself.”

  The competition for the prestigious monument was fueled not only by the usual personal animosities but by a subtle political subtext. Even before the revolution of 1527, the people of Florence took up Michelangelo’s cause. “We had then in Florence the greatest master of the age, and the people wanted him to work on [Hercules], because he had made the Gigante,” one citizen recalled. “But because [Michelangelo] was working on the Medici tombs, Pope Clement VII gave it to another Florentine sculptor, so that his own tomb would not be harmed.” While many remembered fondly the role Michelangelo had played during the last republic, Bandinelli, in addition to being a second-rate sculptor, was regarded as little more than a Medici stooge. When a barge carrying Bandinelli’s column overturned in the Arno, one wit declared that this was “because it was deprived of the virtù of Michelangelo, knowing it was to be mangled by the hands of Baccio, desperate over such an evil fate, it threw itself into the river.”

  Now that the Medici were once again public enemies, Michelangelo was the logical choice to take up the symbolically important work. But as Michelangelo had recently admitted, the times were unfavorable to his art. With a desperate fight for independence looming, Michelangelo’s practical expertise would prove more valuable to the state than his artistic skills. The project for Hercules was set aside, to be taken up only after the crisis had passed. Demonstrating once again the versatility of the Renaissance artist—and following in the footsteps of Brunelleschi and Leonardo—Michelangelo now turned his talents to military engineering. In April 1529 he was put in charge of the city’s defenses as governatore generale of the Tuscan fortifications. His recent work at San Lorenzo provided him with valuable experience handling large teams of men, which he put to good use directing the even larger crews rebuilding the bastions on the high ground near the Church of San Miniato. As always, he threw himself into the work with gusto, constructing redoubts of an innovative design capable of withstanding the artillery that would soon be launched against them by the combined forces of pope and emperor.

  As papal forces under the Prince of Orange closed in on the city, the situation inside the walls grew increasingly desperate. Supplies of food and water were choked off by the advancing army, making the populace susceptible to the plague that ravaged the city in repeated waves. Michelangelo’s favorite brother, Buonarroto, was struck down by the disease during a virulent outbreak in the summer of 1528, leaving the family more dependent than ever on its one productive member. Now, in addition to growing demands made on him by the beleaguered government, Michelangelo was responsible for securing the future of his brother’s children, including his twenty-year-old nephew Lionardo, upon whom the fortunes of the next generation of Buonarroti now rested.XXVIII

  The pressures, both public and private, seemed to be too much for him, since at the very moment his people and his family needed him most, Michelangelo experienced one of those baffling crises of nerve that had afflicted him in the past. Fearing yet another plot on his life, on September 21, 1529, he and two companions fled the city and headed north to Venice. Even wh
ile enjoying the protection of the Most Serene Republic and its sheltering lagoon, Michelangelo did not feel secure, going so far as to request safe passage to France, where he could live out his days as a client of His Most Catholic Majesty. Nine days after his precipitous flight, the government of Florence declared Michelangelo a rebel, threatening him with arrest and loss of property. In response, Michelangelo offered an account of his actions marked by defensiveness and evasions:

  I left without telling any of my friends, and in great disorder. . . . but it was not out of fear or an unwillingness to see the war through to the end. . . . On Tuesday morning, someone came through the gate of San Niccolò where I was at work on the bastions, and whispered in my ear that I shouldn’t stay any longer because I was risking my life. Then he came back and dined at my home, and he provided me with a horse, and he did not leave my side until I had departed Florence, letting me know this was for my own good.

  Condivi tells a slightly different story, claiming that Michelangelo abandoned the city after learning that Malatesta Baglioni, the commander of Florentine defenses, was planning to betray the city to their enemies. When he brought his concerns before the Signoria, they “reproached him with being a timid man and too suspicious [so that] when Michelangelo perceived how little his word was considered, and how the ruin of the city was certain, by the authority he had, he caused one of the gates to be opened and went out with two of his people.”

  A more plausible explanation is given by an acquaintance, one Giovanbattista Busini, who cited numerous disagreements between Michelangelo and the Gonfaloniere, Niccolò Capponi, over his plans to fortify the strategic hill of San Miniato. “Each time, on his return,” Busini recalled, “[Michelangelo] found the hill dismantled, whereupon he complained, feeling this a blot on his reputation and an insult to his magistracy.” Fear no doubt contributed to Michelangelo’s dereliction of duty, but just as critical was his wounded pride.

  While Michelangelo’s first instinct was less than heroic, in the end he played an honorable role in his city’s doomed struggle. After numerous pleas from friends who assured him that all would be forgiven should he return, Michelangelo had a change of heart. Setting out for Florence early in November, he arrived home two weeks later.

  The city to which he returned was in desperate straits. By now Florence was completely invested by imperial forces intent on starving the city into submission. Near the end, the daily death toll climbed to nearly 200 from hunger and disease. While the rich made do with short rations, the poor resorted to hunting rats for meat. As reality grew ever grimmer, citizens turned to the supernatural for deliverance. Visions of flying angels bearing flaming swords appeared overhead, recalling an earlier time when a fire-and-brimstone preacher had whipped the populace into a religious frenzy. Guicciardini, in the camp of the besieging army, wrote that his compatriots defended their walls “for seven months when one would not have expected them to resist even seven days,” noting that “[t]his obstinacy sprang largely from their faith in the prophecy of Fra Girolamo [Savonarola] of Ferrara, that they could not perish.”

  But faith proved no match for cannon and steel. On August 10, 1530, a week after the death of Florence ’s only capable commander, Francesco Ferrucci, the city surrendered to the inevitable. Though the public terms offered by Clement were mild—demanding only the payment of an 80,000-ducat fine and the return of Medici rule—the pope secretly encouraged those who had suffered under the republican regime to take their revenge. Thus began a reign of terror, led in part by the historian Francesco Guicciardini, who spoke for his fellow aristocrats when he declared, “we have as our enemy an entire people.” Six leaders of the previous government were beheaded, many others imprisoned or forced into exile, while those who remained had to endure “tortures and persecutions.”

  Throughout his life Michelangelo had managed to escape the consequences of his flexible loyalties, but this time promised to be different. Pope Clement’s strongman in Florence, Bartolomeo [Baccio] Valori, was determined to punish those who had played any role in the previous regime. And while Michelangelo could not be considered a political leader, he was perhaps the most famous man to lend his prestige to the anti-Medici cause. The artist’s normal timidity served him well in this instance. Alerted that a contract had been put out on his life, Michelangelo fled to the house of Giovan Battista Figiovanni, the former Prior of San Lorenzo. Despite his earlier criticism of the artist’s difficult personality, Figiovanni put himself at considerable risk in order to shield him from the vengeance of the new regime. “[T]he pope having won the peace, Michelangelo came to me,” Figiovanni later recalled. “The commissar Bartolomeo Valori sought to have him killed by Alessandro Corsini, henchman of the pope, for the many offenses directed at the house of the Medici. I saved him from death and saved his belongings: he told me a thousand times of his regrets.”

  Though Valori and CorsiniXXIX viewed Michelangelo as a traitor, Clement was inclined to forgive and forget. When he was informed that the artist had gone into hiding, he sent word back to Florence that Michelangelo was not to be molested. Clement was not a vindictive man. The harsh measures imposed on the rebellious city were meant to discourage future disloyalty, but he knew the artist posed no threat. “Michelangelo is wrong,” the pope declared. “I never did him harm.” In fact, rather than reprimand him for his disloyalty, Clement urged him to resume his work on the abandoned projects at San Lorenzo.

  With his safety now assured, Michelangelo came out of hiding, but despite his relief that the worst was over, he remained anxious and depressed. Returning to the studio after a long absence, he was confronted with a daunting prospect. Crowding the sheds of his various properties were barely begun and half-finished works, not only a half dozen or more statues for the New Sacristy, but an almost equal number of Captives intended for Julius’s tomb, scattered sheets bearing the designs for the Laurentian Library, as well as clay models for the Hercules (soon to be reassigned to Bandinelli).

  Once more Michelangelo picked up his chisels and his pens, but work did not provide him the usual relief from his cares. The dreams of former years had turned to ash, while the city of his youth, its once vital spirit crushed by the cold hand of tyranny, had become a glum, gray place, seething with resentment and mutual recrimination. Protected from bodily harm by Pope Clement, Michelangelo was tolerated only grudgingly by the new regime, which was busy stamping out the last vestiges of Florentine liberty. In the spring of 1532, law caught up with reality when Alessandro de ’ Medici was named “duke of the Florentine Republic.” Not only was Florence now officially the hereditary property of the Medici family, but they themselves were little more than vassals of the emperor, dependent on foreign lances to cow the populace into obedience.

  Michelangelo plodded away on the statues for the New Sacristy, but his heart was no longer in it. More than a decade had passed since he had originally conceived the chapel’s innovative forms, but the world had changed too much—and he with it—to revive that initial spark. His attitude was not helped by the fact that the young Duke Alessandro de ’ Medici seems to have conceived a deep hatred for him.XXX “Michael Angelo lived in great fear, because he was greatly disliked by the Duke,” Condivi recalled, “a young man, as everyone knows, very fierce and vindictive. There is no doubt that, if it had not been for fear of the Pope, he would have had him put away long ago.”

  Propelled by fear and by his sense of obligation to the pope, Michelangelo drove himself to the point of nervous exhaustion. “[H]e works much, eats little and badly, and sleeps less,” reported Giovan Battista Mini, uncle of his assistant, “and for a month now he has been made an invalid by catarrh, headaches and dizziness.” On more than one occasion his health deteriorated to such an extent that his family feared he would not survive. Clement was so concerned that he issued a bull threatening Michelangelo with excommunication should he work on any other project but the family tomb. Despite this exhausting pace, an agent for the Marquis of Mantua (ho
ping to get a work for his master from Michelangelo’s hand) insisted “that there are many who believe that he will not finish it all in his lifetime.”

  It is clear that by this time Michelangelo’s ties to his native city were fraying. During the years he had lived in Rome working for Pope Julius, he had felt like an outsider. His friends were largely Florentine expatriates, and he still belonged heart and soul to the city on the Arno. But after more than a dozen frustrating years in his hometown, his patriotism had worn thin. Florence was no longer a vibrant, independent city, but a cultural backwater and political colony. The once-proud merchants who had erected splendid monuments to honor family and country were either exiled, disenfranchised, or had been reduced to flunkies at the ducal court.

  Michelangelo never made a conscious decision to abandon the Medici tombs. He simply lost interest, as he often did when a project dragged on too long or the artistic challenges had been overcome. Throughout the chapel we can see the signs of his flagging commitment, even in the most nearly completed elements—the tombs of Lorenzo and Giuliano—where crucial pieces are missing. The niches flanking the captains are empty, while the allegorical figures Michelangelo placed on the lids of the two sarcophagi appear to be sliding off their perches, dangling uncomfortably over the void. The four statues of river gods that Michelangelo had planned to carve would have sat to either side of the sarcophagi and provided much needed visual support to the figures above, but these never got beyond the stage of full-scale models.

  The somber palette of the Sacristy—a Whistlerian tone poem in grays and shades of white—is also somewhat misleading. Originally, the coffered dome was decorated with paintings by Giovanni da Udine, which Vasari later whitewashed. Of the frescoes Michelangelo planned for the walls, we know even less, though a couple of quick sketches survive from this period, one depicting the Brazen Serpent, the other the Resurrection, which may originally have been intended for the chapel.